March 2003 - Air-L - lists.aoir.org

E-Government CFP Reminder
by Eric W. Welch 17 Mar '03

17 Mar '03

* * * R E M I N D E R * * * CALL FOR PAPERS Abstract Due March 31, 2003 E-Government Cluster: of Minitracks (s-Gov-Management, e-Policy, e-Democracy, and e-Government Services) at the 37th Hawaiian International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS37) January 5 to 8, 2004 Waikoloa Hitlton, The Big Island of HawaiiCall for Papers CALL FOR PAPERS (Please find detailed CfP under http://www2.ctg.albany.edu/conference/hicss/ ) E-Government Cluster of Minitracks Government at all levels (federal, state, and local) and across all branches (legislative, executive, and judicial) is the biggest single investor in and user of Information Technology (IT). Given its enormously varied missions, government employs a vast range of information technology applications which have dramatically changed the way government is conducted and will continue to affect the way citizens and businesses expect government to function in the 21st century. Government is also a powerful incubator, creator, influencer, precursor, and director of information technology programs, initiatives, and trends. The creation of the Internet and the National Science Foundation's current multiyear Information Technology Research (ITR) and Digital Government programs are examples of this kind of government involvement in IT development. The close and complex relationship between information technology and the public sector has become a major focus of academic research in fields such as public administration, organizational behavior, information science, and technology innovation. The study field of E-Government is covered by four minitracks (s-Gov-Management, e-Policy, e-Democracy, and e-Government Services), which are intended to contribute to the increased understanding of this complex and important topic and to promote improved research in these fields of study. To promote these goals, the four minitracks complement each other by establishing distinct focal points. Please read the detailed CfP under http://www2.ctg.albany.edu/conference/hicss/ Important Deadlines March 31, 200 Abstracts submitted for guidance and indication of appropriate content June 1, 2003 Full papers submitted to Minitrack Chairs Contact minitrack chairs for submission instructions August 31, 2003 Notice of accepted papers sent to Authors

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email inflation?
by geert lovink 17 Mar '03

17 Mar '03

www.nytimes.com/2003/03/16/business/yourmoney/16VIEW.html March 16, 2003 Grading Bush on Prosperity and Pain By DANIEL ALTMAN > An informal survey of economists, which I conducted last week by > e-mail, asked, "To what degree is the Bush administration responsible > (in the sense of bearing credit or blame) for the current state of the > economy?" > > Answers were sought from 20 well-known Wall Street economists from > different companies and 125 academics specializing in macroeconomics. > The academic group included R. Glenn Hubbard, the chairman of the > president's Council of Economic Advisers, and his nominated successor, > N. Gregory Mankiw of Harvard. Neither responded. Among those who did > was Martin S. Feldstein, a Harvard professor who held the post in the > early 1980's. > > The economists were encouraged to pick from a five-point scale, ranging > from "not at all" to "completely," and to offer additional comments. > The academics, of whom 57 responded, averaged 2.3 — between "a little > bit" and "a fair amount." The average from the 11 Wall Street > economists who wrote back was lower, at 1.9. Interesting to see the inflation. Only half responded. What to make of it? Geert

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POP!Tech
by Art McGee 16 Mar '03

16 Mar '03

Registration for POP!Tech 2003: $1195.00 They are out of their fucking minds! And they have the audacity to even broach the issue of DIVERSITY at this gathering?! I have a good mind to start calling the tech industry and cyberstudies field on it's own shit. I'm just going to start showing up at conferences and symposiums unannounced like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, and telling them to shove their registration fees up their ass. I'll make them have to call the cops so I can embarass them with their hypocrisy. Digital Divide?! I got your digital divide right here! Art

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Model/Framework for studying Internet user behaviour in broadband environment
by Yogesh Dwivedi 16 Mar '03

16 Mar '03

Dear Internet Researcher, I am Yogesh Dwivedi, pursuing PhD Information Systems. My research focus is "Internet users behaviour in broadband environment". For this topic I am searching appropriate framework / model. It will be very nice if anyone of you could able to provide some suggestion regarding the theory/framework/model of studying Internet users behaviour and any suggestions on published research in this particular area. Please send your reply at Yogesh.kumar.Dwivedi(a)brunel.ac.uk Your assistance is much appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help. Kind Regards Yogesh Dwivedi -------------------------------------------------------------------- Yogesh Kumar Dwivedi Research Scholar Departmentment of Information Systems & Computing Brunel University Uxbridge, UB8 3PH London, UK

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usenet demographics
by Scott A. Golder 15 Mar '03

15 Mar '03

I'm in the process of completing my thesis on the development of different social roles in usenet, and am trying to find some demographic statistics to shed some light on my qualitative findings. More specifically, I'm interested in knowing how many newsgroups are in existence (with worldwide distribution), how many distinct people participate in these groups, and what the gender balance is. If anyone knows of a source for such statistics and could point me to it, I would appreciate it. Scott ------------------------------------------------------------------- Scott A. Golder golder(a)fas.harvard.edu http://www.scottgolder.net

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FW: eLearning, the Internet and Social Inclusion
by Matthew Allen 15 Mar '03

15 Mar '03

-----Original Message----- From: Kirsteen Monteith To: Matthew Allen Sent: 6/03/03 18:56 Subject: eLearning, the Internet and Social Inclusion Please forward to anyone who you think might be interested. This is an invitation to join a new elearning discussion group. The Common Room is a discussion forum open to all, to share ideas, exchange opinions, and ask questions relating to elearning, the use of C&IT in education, the Internet and social cohesion. Please feel free to join current discussions and/or begin discussions on topics that are of interest to you by logging on to The Common Room at <http://www.odeluce.stir.ac.uk> http://www.odeluce.stir.ac.uk The Common Room has been created by ODELUCE News Service Team. To find out about the ODELUCE project, explore our online course directory, visit our news board for up-to-date news stories, or check our events calendar for forthcoming conferences, exhibitions and workshops, please visit the ODELUCE News Service site at <http://www.odeluce.stir.ac.uk> http://www.odeluce.stir.ac.uk If you have a related website, please feel free to add the above link. We look forward to hearing from you. Kind regards Kirsteen The ODELUCE News Service Team

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Re: [Air-l] data for time series analysis
by Irene Berkowitz 14 Mar '03

14 Mar '03

Hi I think our stats at Temple are public, if you don't care what the content of the data is, but rather usage patterns. http://www.temple.edu/stats I know that if you choose the bulletin, you will see lots of interesting patterns. I don't watch the other sites to much. There will be at least 30 months of data there. Where you see sudden drop-offs means that we have changed the servers and the tracking has changed. IB Irene Berkowitz Program Director, Curricular Publications and Systems Office of the Vice Provost Temple University tel. 215-204-7596 fax. 215-204 3175 berkowitz(a)mail.temple.edu >>> tkennedy(a)netwomen.ca 03/14/2003 12:27:47 PM >>> Hi Folks - I am taking a graduate Stats course - "Time Series Analysis" - and I would like to incorporate my own Internet research interests for my final paper. I am looking for any Internet data (use, access, etc) that has monthly tracking. I believe I need approximately 30 intervals for the analysis - so obviously I cannot do this in 'years' for Internet research. If you have any suggestions, please email me at tkennedy(a)netwomen.ca Thanks in advance. Tracy ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tracy L.M. Kennedy Graduate Department of Sociology University of Toronto www.netwomen.ca tkennedy(a)netwomen.ca ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ _______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l(a)aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l

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FW: VIRTUAL SIT-IN OF DOW "GREENWASH" SITE, ALL THIS WEEK
by Robert M. Tynes 14 Mar '03

14 Mar '03

Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2003 06:51:08 -0500 From: "ricardo dominguez" <rdom(a)thing.net> Subject: VIRTUAL SIT-IN OF DOW "GREENWASH" SITE, ALL THIS WEEK March 10, 2003 VIRTUAL SIT-IN OF DOW "GREENWASH" SITE, ALL THIS WEEK: http://www.dowethics.com/bhopal.com/ Action Ends on March 17th, 2003 Dow Chemical is going to court this week in India. Not as the defendants for their ongoing responsibility for the Bhopal disaster, but as the plaintiffs: Dow is suing the SURVIVORS of the disaster for protesting at a Dow plant, and--we're not making this up--they're demanding US$10,000 from them... about 10 years of wages at local rates. But pesky internet activists are showing Dow there is no escape, with a virtual sit-in of Dow's internet Greenwash headquarters, Bhopal.com (http://www.dowethics.com/bhopal.com/) Dow's unapologetic website, which includes an "incident review," denies that Dow purchased any liability for the disaster when they bought Union Carbide, which was the majority stakeholder in the Bhopal plant (even though Dow did pay up for Union Carbide's asbestos liabilities in the First World). The site also states that "The legacy of those killed and injured is a chemical industry that adheres voluntarily to strict safety and environmental standards." (You may want to read that sentence again just to be sure you got it right.) After the 1984 gas leak, which has killed 20,000 people to date, Union Carbide abandoned the factory site and fled India. For 18 years since, the toxic wastes left by Union Carbide have been bleeding poisons into the groundwater and affecting the health of the people living near the factory. Dow merged with Union Carbide in 2001 and paid up for Union Carbide's asbestos liabilities, but it refuses to do the same for Bhopal. Dow has faced may protests since taking over Union Carbide, but suing the victims represent a new low in Dow's attempts to gag its critics. Most of the survivors come from the poorest sections of Indian society. To reinforce its message, therefore, Dow is asking for a monetary settlement from the victims. The amount they seek represents an average Indian's earnings over 10 to 20 years. The cause? Dow's "loss of business". If Dow sues real-life protesters into silence, protest will spring up elsewhere. This protest hopes to show Dow that the only way to really silence protest will be to spend a small fraction of its US$28 billion annual turnover on cleaning up Bhopal. A virtual sit-in is simply an automated way of sending lots of traffic to a website. Activists around the world park their browsers on a page which does nothing more than automatically load the bhopal.com site several times a minute. In the same way that a real-world sit-in disrupts traffic, the virtual sit-in makes the target site less responsive and slow. Eventually, the site may become so crowded with protestors that it stops serving information completely. The virtual sit-in will be located at The Yes Men's hugely successful spoof of Dow's website: http://www.dowethics.com/bhopal.com/. Dow has been playing whack-a-mole with the DowEthics.com site, launching several abortive legal attempts to shut it down, only to have new activists set it up in a new spot on the internet. Other parts of the site explain more honestly why Dow refuses to clean up Bhopal and why image is everything to Dow.

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RE: [Air-l] usenet stats
by Steve Fox (NISD) 14 Mar '03

14 Mar '03

http://netscan.research.microsoft.com/ Some great Usenet data here for what Marc calls 'social metadata.' -----Original Message----- From: Barry Wellman [mailto:wellman@chass.utoronto.ca] Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 9:39 AM To: aoir list Dear Scot Golder, et al. Some of your Usenet Qs (and ohters you haven't thought of) can be answered by going to Marc Smith's Netscan website at Microsoft research. Sorry, I don't have the URL, but surely Google does. Barry ___________________________________________________________________ Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman(a)chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 ___________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l(a)aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l

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usenet stats
by Barry Wellman 14 Mar '03

14 Mar '03

Dear Scot Golder, et al. Some of your Usenet Qs (and ohters you haven't thought of) can be answered by going to Marc Smith's Netscan website at Microsoft research. Sorry, I don't have the URL, but surely Google does. Barry ___________________________________________________________________ Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman(a)chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 ___________________________________________________________________

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